Advanced computers have defeated chess masters and learned how to pick through mountains of data to recognize faces and voices. Now, a billionaire developer of software and artificial intelligence is teaming up with top universities and companies to see if A.I. can help curb the current and future pandemics.
Thomas M. Siebel, founder and chief executive of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence company in Redwood City, Calif., said the public-private consortium would spend $367 million in its initial five years, aiming its first awards at finding ways to slow the new coronavirus that is sweeping the globe.
I cannot imagine a more important use of A.I., Mr. Siebel said in an interview.
Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. its first challenge being the pandemic.
The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogens spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the diseases evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks.
Condoleezza Rice, a former U.S. secretary of state who serves on the C3.ai board and was recently named the next director of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank on the Stanford campus, called the initiative a unique opportunity to better manage these phenomena and avert the worst outcomes for humanity.
The new institute plans to award up to 26 grants annually, each featuring up to $500,000 in research funds in addition to computing resources. It requires the principal investigators to be located at the consortiums universities but allows partners and team members at other institutions. It wants coronavirus proposals to be submitted by May and plans to award its first grants in June. The research findings are to be made public.
The institutes co-directors are S. Shankar Sastry of the University of California, Berkeley, and Rayadurgam Srikant of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The computing power is to come from C3.ai and Microsoft, as well as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The schools run some of the worlds most advanced supercomputers.
Successful A.I. can be extremely hard to deliver, especially in thorny real-world problems such as self-driving cars. When asked if the institute was less a plan for practical results than a feel-good exercise, Mr. Siebel replied, The probability of something good not coming out of this is zero.
In recent decades, many rich Americans have sought to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research, in some cases outdoing what the federal government can achieve because its goals are often unadventurous and its budgets unpredictable.
Forbes puts Mr. Siebels current net worth at $3.6 billion. His First Virtual Group is a diversified holding company that includes philanthropic ventures.
Born in 1952, Mr. Siebel studied history and computer science at the University of Illinois and was an executive at Oracle before founding Siebel Systems in 1993. It pioneered customer service software and merged with Oracle in 2006. He founded what came to be named C3.ai in 2009.
The first part of the companys name, Mr. Siebel said in an email, stands for the convergence of three digital trends: big data, cloud computing and the internet of things, with A.I. amplifying their power. Last year, he laid out his thesis in a book Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction. C3.ai works with clients on projects like ferreting out digital fraud and building smart cities.
In an interview, Eric Horvitz, the chief scientist of Microsoft and a medical doctor who serves on the spinoff institutes board, likened the push for coronavirus solutions to a compressed moon shot.
The power of the approach, he said, comes from bringing together key players and institutions. We forget who is where and ask what we can do as a team, Dr. Horvitz said.
Seeing artificial intelligence as a good thing perhaps a lifesaver is a sharp reversal from how it often gets held in dread. Critics have assailed A.I. as dangerously powerful, even threatening the enslavement of humanity to robots with superhuman powers.
In no way am I suggesting that A.I. is all sweetness and light, Mr. Siebel said. But the new institute, he added, is a place where it can be a force for good.
On Wednesday, Twitter briefly locked conservative site The Federalists account for suggesting people deliberately expose themselves to the novel coronavirus. The Federalist promoted the medically unsound idea of medical chickenpox parties to infect young, healthy people with the virus under controlled quarantine.
The tweet was removed for violating the social media platforms policies, and a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge that the account was temporarily locked for violating the Twitter Rules regarding COVID-19.
Twitter bans coronavirus-related content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information. That includes tweets promoting ineffective or counterproductive treatments, denying the effectiveness of measures like social distancing, or contradicting known public health facts.
The Federalist was tweeting an article where an Oregon physician urged readers to seriously consider a somewhat unconventional approach to the pandemic. But unconventional is a bit of a euphemism. The hospital system is overloaded even without deliberate infections, and unlike with chickenpox, we dont know how long COVID-19 immunity lasts. In other words, hosting a coronavirus chickenpox party is a very bad idea.
The coronavirus pandemic has led to a global lockdown and thousands of deaths, as well as economic chaos. America has the third-highest number of confirmed cases, after China and Italy. Congress is attempting to mitigate the economic harm with a stimulus package.
President Donald Trump has chronically minimized the risk of coronavirus infection and made falsely rosy claims about new treatments and vaccines, recently alarming experts by suggesting social distancing restrictions end by Easter Sunday. Other Republicans have either downplayed the threat or argued that some Americans should accept a heightened risk of death to let the country leave lockdown. Social media platforms have to decide when these statements could have a negative effect on the larger pandemic response, sometimes drawing ire in the process.
Earlier this week, blogging platform Medium removed an article from technologist and former Mitt Romney campaign team member Aaron Ginn. Ginn claimed that the COVID-19 response was being driven by hysteria or a mob-like fear. A Medium spokesperson told The Verge that Ginns essay violated rules against controversial, suspect, and extreme content, which cover distorted or pseudoscientific arguments that could have serious social repercussions.
Every day, we are removing coronavirus-related posts that violate our rules, the spokesperson said.
Twitter also slapped a warning on the article when it was later reposted elsewhere, telling readers who clicked the link that it was potentially harmful or associated with a violation of Twitters Terms of Service.
Ginns Medium article didnt fit the stereotype of social media misinformation posts, which often incorporate alarmist exaggerations, blatantly made-up facts, or miracle cure scams. But critics like University of Washington biology professor Carl Bergstrom cited logical leaps that painted a misleading yet widely cited portrait of the pandemic. The Wall Street Journals editorial board, however, slammed Mediums decision and urged platforms not to require conformity with the judgment of expert institutions, even as many of those institutions themselves woefully misjudged the situation months or weeks ago.
Facebook also recently published guidance for COVID-19 hoaxes and misinformation, drawing a line around content that could contribute to imminent physical harm. That includes statements like saying that social distancing doesnt work something Facebook says it recently started taking down. It doesnt include more abstract claims like conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, which arent considered immediately harmful, but can be de-ranked and flagged with a warning label, like other false information on the platform.
Thousands of miles away in Berlin, German scientist Olfert Landt was already on alert. For 30 years, he had worked on diagnosing emerging diseases, including Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). He wanted to make a test kit to help doctors diagnose the disease -- and he wanted to do it fast.
Virologists usually wait until the genetic material of a new virus is sequenced to start working on a test. This time, Landt and his 30-strong company TIB Molbiol got started early. By January 9 they had designed their first test kit using SARS and other known coronaviruses as references. Along with scientists from a local university hospital, he designed three kits, meaning once the sequence was published, they could pick the one that worked best.
On January 11, Landt sent his kit to Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control and diagnostic company Roche in Hong Kong. He didn't know for certain that it would work, and he hadn't even prepared instructions.
Over the weekend, he worked up a manual and emailed it over. "We said, listen, you have six tubes without any instructions," he recalls. "Give them to the test laboratory, you can test patients with this."
Landt estimates he has manufactured four million tests by the end of February, and another 1.5 million each week since then. Each kit -- which includes 100 tests -- has sold for at least 160 euro ($173) each to clients in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Australia, Europe, with his two adult children helping label and pack the kits. His wife, who has worked for the company for 15 years, is also involved.
"I'm not working for money. I take the money, yes, it's fair, we do good work," he said. "But in the end, we don't need money."
But nearly three months after Landt first noticed reports of a mysterious disease, countries around the world are still struggling to test for Covid-19, the infectious disease caused by a new novel coronavirus. Some tests are inaccurate, others took a long time to create, and now testing companies are warning they are running dangerously low on materials.
That raises an important question: if a test can be developed so quickly, why are some countries still struggling?
In Hong Kong, virologist Leo Poon was also watching the developments unfold in January.
Like Landt, he had worked on emerging diseases for years. In 2003, it was his team of scientists at Hong Kong University (HKU) who identified that SARS, which had emerged the year before in mainland China, was a coronavirus.
"Because we have gone through all these events in the past, we know how important it is to have a working diagnostic test," he said. "That's why we basically tried to get the work done as soon as possible."
But unlike Landt, Poon waited for the sequence.
All forms of life have a type of molecule that carries their genetic instructions. In humans, and most life forms, that's DNA -- the genetic material that tells us to grow two legs and walk upright. Instead of DNA, many viruses -- including hepatitis, Ebola, and rabies -- have RNA, or ribonucleic acid, which, like DNA, is a nucleic acid that carries genetic information.
Once Zhang shared the sequence, Poon's team started work.
First, they looked at the RNA of the new coronavirus, and decided their test would target parts of the code that were similar to the RNA of the SARS coronavirus -- parts that would be less likely to mutate, as they were essential to the virus.
Next, they designed the test.
The standard way to detect a virus is using a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Invented in the 1980s, PCR is used for a range of things, from identifying the DNA of a suspect at a crime scene, to testing whether a crop of fruit is infected with a virus.
PCR tests are made up of ingredients called reagents, which include primers and probes.
Before running a PCR test, the RNA in a virus has to be turned into a DNA copy. Then, the primers look for the target regions within a gene. If they find the gene targets, then these regions are copied over and over, explained Maureen Ferran, an associate professor of biology at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Each time a copy is made of the DNA, light will be emitted. If there's a lot of light, that indicates the presence of the genetic material that identifies the virus -- meaning that a person has tested positive for the virus.
Most kits have at least two genetic targets, to improve the reliability of the result.
2019
December 31: Cases of pneumonia detected in Wuhan, China,are first reported to the WHO.
2020
January 5: China announces that the unknown pneumonia cases in Wuhan are not SARS or MERS.
January 7: Chinese authorities confirm that they have identified the virus as a novel coronavirus, initially named2019-nCoVby the WHO.
January 11: The sequenced genome is posted on open-source site virological.org. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus. Berlin scientist Olfert Landt and his team send their test kit to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
January 12: Chinese authorities share the sequence on January 12.
January 16: Hong Kong University scientists submit their kit to the World Health Organization.
January 17: A top health official says the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made its own test, without using the protocols published by the WHO.
February 11: The WHO names the coronavirus Covid-19.
Sources: CNN reporting, World Health Organization
All this is taking place on a tiny scale -- in test tubes, within a diagnostic machine. The diagnostic machine measures the level of light, and compares it with the positive control -- usually a sample of the virus. If the positive control doesn't test positive, then scientists will know that the test isn't working.
Developing a test is not difficult, according to Nathan Grubaugh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine. The trick is making sure it doesn't pick up other viruses, too.
Within six days of getting the sequence, Poon had a working test.
Like Landt's kit, Poon's test can pick up SARS and Covid-19. Poon says that isn't an issue, as there isn't currently a SARS outbreak.
In the months since, Poon has sent tests for free to more than 40 countries all over the world, including Egypt and Cambodia. Each country only gets one kit, which costs between 4,000 to 5,000 Hong Kong dollars ($515 to $644) and can be used to test 100 samples. Some countries, like Nepal, have sent their samples to Hong Kong University to test. The idea is to "buy some time" for countries, so they have a test while mobilizing resources to create their own.
But while companies like TIB Molbiol are making money from their kits, Poon and his team have reallocated funding from other projects to their Covid-19 test kits, and are essentially working for free.
"We don't have money, we have zero resources," said Poon. "We are just distributing it from our good will."
"The (intellectual property) issue is not what we care about in this public health crisis," Poon said. "What drives us to do this work is to try to react to these emerging infections so we can save more lives."
In mid-January, in Gisborne, a sunny city on the coast of New Zealand, John Mackay got a request from the government's National Reference Laboratory -- he needed to buy materials to detect the coronavirus.
Mackay, the technical director of diagnostics lab Dnature, emailed Landt. "Olfret, if this is playing out like SARS, I'm guessing you have the kits sitting on the shelf ready to go immediately," he recalls writing that afternoon.
Within half an hour, there was a reply from Landt, despite it being early morning, Berlin time. "Yes, do you want some?"
"The guy is a complete workaholic," Mackay said of Landt. "He's a phenomenal guy."
It was a similar situation in Australia. Like New Zealand, they had no samples of the virus, so they referred to tests developed overseas, according to William Rawlinson, the director of Serology, Virology and OTDS Laboratories, which leads much of the testing in the Australian state of New South Wales. Even before Australia had its first case, it had kits.
Other countries decided to go it alone.
In the United States, there were also problems.
The agency announced on February 5 that it would begin shipping kits. Soon after, some labs reported that the tests were not working, meaning some had to be re-manufactured. It's not clear how the defect happened.
It's easy to see how Landt and Poon's early work helped other countries buy time and prepare for an outbreak. But neither Landt nor Poon have the capacity to make enough tests for the whole world.
And there are other also reasons why the world needs multiple test kits.
Another issue is that the virus could potentially mutate in such a way that one kit no longer works. If a test targets Covid-19's "N" gene, for instance, and the virus mutates so that gene no longer exists, then the kit will not pick up the virus.
Another consideration is that a test that works in one country might not work in another, said Rawlinson. If, hypothetically, the presence of dengue fever caused a test not to work, and a country had a large rate of dengue fever, then there might be a high rate of false negative, he said.
Having a range of tests also puts less pressure on one manufacturer or supply chain, as different suppliers may use different materials.
Ferran said testing could have changed the US's infection rate.
"If we had better testing early on, we could have really changed the rate of infection. But we can't go back," she said. "We just have to go forward and learn from this and have this not happen again."
Put bluntly, some countries have squandered the opportunity to prepare that Poon and Landt's early work gave them.
Both the United States and the United Kingdom have been criticized for being slow to test, and for not testing enough people.
That's in stark contrast with the approach of other countries.
"We're doing a lot of testing comparatively," he said. "We want to find the cases which is why we're testing where there's suspicion."
Poon says there are a number of reasons why some countries have been slow to test -- some are practical, others administrative.
Testing requires trained staff, the right equipment, and the right materials -- a lack of any of those could hold up testing.
In the US, there has been an additional bureaucratic hoop. In some countries, tests can be used almost immediately due to different rules around emerging diseases.
The FDA has now allowed companies to manufacture and ship tests before receiving permission.
Thanks to the loosened rules, private companies have been able to speed up their response. US company Quest Diagnostics, for instance, launched its new test on March 9 and expects to be able to perform 280,000 tests per week by the start of April.
To people like Landt, inaction from politicians is frustrating.
He recalls being at the opera at the start of February, when very few people had been infected in Munich, and approaching the German Minister of Health, who he saw there by chance. "You should tell the public this is a bad disease," he recalls telling him. "Don't tell them it's only something in China."
But the German government was slow to take vital action, such as reducing social contact. It now has more than 29,000 confirmed cases.
"The virus must travel," Landt said, explaining whether the virus kills the host, or the host's immune system kill the virus, either way, the virus will need to find another person to infect to stay alive. "If you reduce your contact to other people, the virus can no longer travel ... One infected will infect one or two other people, so it's like an atomic bomb, it's an exponential curve," he said.
"Only with testing we can identify people and isolate them to prevent the spread over to other people."
CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki and Rebecca Wright contributed additional reporting from Tokyo.
Dont rush to the emergency room.
Emergency room waiting rooms are packed with very sick people and overworked staff and doctors. Its not a place you want to be, and if you show up unnecessarily, youre taking care away from people who really need it. Before going to the E.R., stop and ask yourself, Would I go to the E.R. for these symptoms (a cough or fever) under normal circumstances? In most cases, the answer is probably no. Coughs, fevers, sore throats and runny noses have rarely been an emergency in the past, and those symptoms, even if due to the coronavirus, wont be an emergency in most cases. Call your doctor.
Patients at high-risk should check in with their doctors as soon as they have symptoms. A doctor who knows your situation can help you navigate the system and advise you on how and when to seek treatment. High-risk patients include the elderly as well as people with asthma or lung disease, or a history of pneumonia, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, a compromised immune system due to illness or a drug therapy, or a person who has recently been treated for cancer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the following symptoms should prompt you to seek emergency treatment.
Difficulty breathing
Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
Confusion or inability to arouse
Bluish lips or face
Any other symptom that is severe or concerning
Many people who have the coronavirus will not stay in a hospital and will be isolated at home. If you have all of the symptoms of the virus but havent been tested, you should assume you have it and still take precautions.
Caring for someone with mild to moderate symptoms of the coronavirus is similar to caring for someone with the flu. Give them supportive care, fluids, soups and Tylenol, and have them take their temperature regularly. If a person is so sick or weak that he or she cant eat, drink or go to the bathroom, call a doctor. The World Health Organization has guidelines on home care for patients with suspected or confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
Yes! The patient should be confined to a separate room with no or minimal contact with the rest of the household (including pets), and should use a separate bathroom if possible. Most of the time, a sick person will feel miserable, but he or she can pick up food trays left at the door and sanitize a shared bathroom after using it. (This may not be the case with young children.) If you have masks at home, both patient and caregiver should wear them when in contact with each other.
It is a familiar trope in films and books about apocalypse: as the world totters, people flee to a small island and hunker down, hoping the remoteness will offer a haven until the threat has passed.
A romantic notion, but if youre eyeing one of Irelands offshore islands as a refuge from coronavirus be warned the locals would rather you stay away.
Residents of Achill, Aran and Rathlin have expressed alarm at being labelled sanctuaries on social media and have appealed to outsiders to steer clear.
We conducted a poll and the overwhelming response was people would rather that tourism is halted, said Mire U Mhaolin, manager of a community development co-op on the Aran Islands, in the Atlantic off the coast of Galway. We feel we dont have the resources to deal with an outbreak here.
The three Aran islands, Inis Mr, Inis Mein and Inis Orr, have a combined population of 1,300, many elderly inhabitants and just two doctors.
If the coastguard had to evacuate a patient with coronavirus the crew would then have to go into quarantine, leaving the islands even more vulnerable, said U Mhaolin. Normally we welcome tourism but we are taking an opportunity to ask people to not visit.
Islanders have asked for and received a commitment from private ferry operators to curb services and restrict the number of visitors.
This request is being made in an attempt to minimise both the short-term and the long-term effect this disease will have on these beautiful islands and their peoples, Aran Island Ferries said.
However, a state-owned ferry service has continued operating, citing a public service mandate that can be overruled only with an official lockdown, which has not been declared.
That allowed the arrival last week of a group of visitors who rented a cottage, said U Mhaolin. I think they were Irish, a bunch of young people.
Residents on Rathlin, an island off the coast of County Antrim, with a population of 135 and no known case of Covid-19, have also restricted ferry services to essential travel in an effort to discourage tourists. The ferry terminal at Ballycastle, on the Northern Ireland mainland, closed to the public on 23 March.
Some residents of Achill island, which is connected to the rest of County Mayo by a bridge, have been appalled by visitors who have flocked to beaches and ignored physical distancing recommendations.
Achill Island is not a safe haven, tweeted one local. It is a top-heavy residential community of venerable elderly people We have seen the arrival of an enormous amount of out-of-towners. Some are showing such disregard for the guidelines You are not on holidays!
Chris McCarthy, Achills tourism manager, echoed the criticism. A lot werent adhering to the HSE (Health Service Executive) directives its not good to see.
Visitors that respected guidelines were still welcome, he said, but they should know the island was no haven from the pandemic.
Two people have been diagnosed with coronavirus, said McCarthy, and they want the public to know the disease has arrived. They want it out there that just that because were isolated it doesnt mean it cant get here.
A local GP, Noreen Lineen-Curtis, said Achill needed to take measures like anywhere else.
The comedian David ODoherty told the Irish Times he brought his elderly parents to the familys cottage in Achill. Its isolation, but isolation with a lot more space than you would get in the city. its my favourite place on earth, it really is, which is why its a weird place to be stuck in an apocalypse.
As global leaders race to contain the brutal threat of a growing pandemic, a triumvirate of denial has emerged in Latin America, with the leaders of Brazil, Mexico and Nicaragua downplaying the danger of a looming outbreak.
In the beginning, Obrador dismissed the threat posed by the novel coronavirus and "this idea that you can't hug," telling reporters on March 4, "You have to hug. Nothing happens." Ten days later, he posted a video of himself surrounded by supporters, hugging them and kissing a child. Two days after that, he held up two amulets and told reporters they would protect him from the virus.
As confirmed cases have surged in recent days, AMLO, as the president is often called, has shown more concern, encouraging people to stay home. He said his cabinet will be working on ways to help vulnerable populations, providing relief to small businesses and banning gatherings of 100 people or more.
But as recently as Sunday, he posted a video encouraging people to continue to go out to eat, urging Mexicans to limit any damage to the economy. "We do nothing good and we don't help if we're paralyzed, if we act in an exaggerated way," he said in the video. "Let's continue living life normally."
Then, he insisted Tuesday that fighting the virus starts at home. "It is a fact that daughters take care of parents," he said at a press conference. "Men can be more detached but daughters are always tending to their mothers, their fathers. So, men and women, take care of our elderly," he concluded, going on to say multiple times that Mexico is prepared to handle the crisis.
To date, Mexico has registered 405 confirmed cases. An additional 1,219 others are suspected of having the virus and five people have died so far. Experts have told CNN given the paltry level of testing in the country, the true count could be much higher.
Two doctors who are on the frontline of the fight warn that Mexico could be a disaster waiting to happen. "I do not think Mexico is prepared for this," said one veteran physician at a leading hospital in Mexico City, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to media. "We aren't testing enough because there aren't enough tests, and we do not remotely have enough beds, enough ventilators, not even enough facemasks to treat this epidemic."
Another doctor at a leading private hospital in Mexico City who was not authorized to speak publicly told CNN that he feared hospitals will soon reach their maximum capacity. "Given that during this epidemic the number of cases will inevitably rise exponentially, hospitals in Mexico would collapse within a matter of days should that happen," he said.
In the absence of a large federal response, the fight against the virus has largely fallen to Mexico's states, municipalities, and even private businesses. On Monday, Mexico City forced all bars, nightclubs, and movie theaters to close and banned gatherings of 50 people or more (though CNN witnessed lots of people still out on city streets Monday).
Although restaurants in Mexico City are exempt from Monday's new policy, many chose to close anyway. Meroma, an extremely popular high-end restaurant in Mexico City, closed last week. "We have decided to be a step ahead of the authorities and close...It is a very hard decision for us but we want you all to be safe...," read a sign at its entrance.
Across the country, schools have elected to shutter and many large businesses told employees to work from home, despite there being no clear federal mandate to do so.
Brazil
When news emerged on March 12 that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's press secretary had tested positive for the virus, some hoped the president who described the novel coronavirus as "overrated" would take the viral threat more seriously.
But he's only doubled down since then, calling the virus "a little flu" in a television interview on Sunday. "The people will soon see that they were tricked by these governors and by the large part of the media when it comes to coronavirus," he told Brazilian network Record TV, referring to the states of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, where governors have declared states of emergency.
Brazil has recorded the most cases in Latin America, at 2,247 cases so far. Thirty-four people have died. And in light of little action federally, local governments have started taking preventive steps in the hopes of avoiding potential fallout: Soccer stadiums and convention centers are being converted into field hospitals as cities prepare for overwhelmed hospitals. States across Brazil have closed shopping malls and schools while banning public gatherings.
And many Brazilians aren't buying Bolsonaro's reassurances. In cities across the country, residents go to their windows and balconies every night at 8:30pm, banging pots and pans to show discontent with Bolsonaro's administration.
Nicaragua
As one of the western hemisphere's poorest nations, Nicaragua is in a worse position than most to fight off any potential outbreak inside its borders. It only has two cases so far, but fear is mounting inside the country as citizens express discontent with the government response led by President Daniel Ortega, who hasn't been seen in public in weeks.
Bryan, 27, lives with his 52-year-old mother and tells CNN they have been staying home since neighboring Costa Rica reported its first case. But the government, he says, acts as if nothing has changed.
"The government is participating in political marches outside, there was just one on Saturday," he told CNN on a phone call, asking to only use his first name for fear of retaliation.
Nicaragua's vice president, Rosario Murillo -- the wife of President Ortega -- has advised Nicaraguans to turn to religion in difficult times. "We can move forward serenely...responsibly, and above all believing in the Lord, knowing that this faith defends and saves us," Murillo said in the context of the coronavirus, according to state-run news agency Digital 19.
The federal government has taken few preventative measures so far, only launching a public hygiene campaign while monitoring tourists from countries with a high number of cases, according to Digital 19. As a part of the hygiene campaign, the government sent workers door to door with instructions on how to properly wash hands.
Judith, 36, pretended not to be home. "They could be spreaders of the virus," she said to CNN, using only her first name to protect her identity. "They don't wear masks."
A doctor in the city of Jinotepe, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, said Nicaragua's public health system is not equipped to deal with an outbreak. "Nicaragua has a vulnerable health system and an infection this massive could create disasters, our system will collapse," he said to CNN. "It is greatly irresponsible for the state to not take real measures against this pandemic."
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the number of suspected cases of coronavirus in Mexico.
When I asked NASA leadership whether they had changed their approach to asking for Artemis funding in the midst of the pandemic, I was prepared for the agencys usual, dreamy remarks about the importance of exploring the great unknown. The answer, while indirect, was more down-to-earth, in keeping with the tone of the times: NASA space exploration has been an economic driver for the U.S. economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs, reducing our trade deficit, and inspiring countless Americans to pursue careers in STEM fields, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said in a statement. Artemis will continue that long tradition, growing our economy and improving life on Earth for generations to come.
It might be tempting, for the science-fiction-minded, to think that global emergencies like this pandemic are proof that space exploration is more worthwhile than ever, because its our ticket out of here. But moving a large chunk of humanity off Earth, even if it could be done, would hardly be a panacea. Preparing a passenger ship to Mars under threat of infection would be difficult, and so would preventing the virus from hitching a ride. The International Space Station remains in operation, with three people currently on boardand three more expected to launch in Aprilbut the station is a laboratory, not a disaster bunker.
Read: What do you tell someone who still wont stay home?
Its just incredibly humbling, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT, told me recently. Because we think were so great, right? We can launch all these spacecraft. Were just so powerful. And now were just basically knocked into a standstill.
Seager works on a NASA mission to detect distant planets outside our solar system, which means she spends her days thinking about worlds beyond Earth. Shes still thinking about exoplanets right nowafter all, she still has to workbut like many of us, she is glued to the news, trying to stay healthy, and navigating the strange new norms of everyday life; Massachusetts, where she lives, issued a stay-at-home advisory last week. If some big exoplanet news came out tomorrow, Seagerwhom The New York Times once referred to as The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earthprobably wouldnt pay attention to it. I dont think people have the bandwidth to get excited about new discoveries right now, she said.
Space exploration unfolds over the course of years, even decades; it involves a particular kind of thinking about the future and requires us to imagine separate realities with all the vividness with which we experience our own. It seems almost ridiculous to ask people to consider the cosmic right now, when the great unknown can just as easily apply to the next couple of weeks.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
HONG KONG What began as a classic Lunar New Year celebration ended with nearly a dozen members of a family sickened and a city of seven million on edge.
Nineteen members of an extended family gathered in January for hot pot a traditional Chinese meal in which diners dip raw meat, seafood and vegetables into a shared caldron of simmering broth.
By the end of the meal, 11 people had unwittingly contracted the new coronavirus, the largest single cluster of cases to date in Hong Kong. Reports about the family, later known in the local news media as the hot pot clan, alarmed many in this semiautonomous Chinese city, spurring restaurants to action and leading residents to avoid large banquet-style meals, as well as hot pot.
As restaurants around the world close or retool in an effort to enforce social distancing, Hong Kongs hot pot restaurants offer both a cautionary tale and some good advice about how to continue to serve customers amid an epidemic.
Soon after the cases were confirmed, and just weeks after a lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the epidemic started, the party venue where the family had eaten closed its doors for good.
Other hot pot restaurants saw trade drop off rapidly. Spots famous for the dish pulled it from their menus.
One restaurant, Suppa, said business was down as much as 96 percent after news of the family spread across the city. For two days, it had no customers at all.
The hardest part is to restore peoples confidence, said Bong Kwok, 34, one of the restaurants founders, who opened Suppa in 2017. This happened too fast.
The outbreak was the latest in a string of recent troubles for the restaurant and the city.
Jason Ho, 33, the restaurants other founder, described the past few months as a roller coaster.
For months last year, the restaurants Causeway Bay neighborhood was shrouded in tear gas as street battles raged between antigovernment protesters and riot police officers.
After weeks of recording new cases in the single digits, Hong Kong is experiencing a resurgence in coronavirus cases, linked to travelers and overseas residents from Europe who returned to the city as the pandemic marched across the globe.
The new wave of infections prompted the government on Monday to announce a ban on alcohol sales at bars and restaurants in an effort to encourage social distancing, dealing another blow to the industry.
Mr. Kwok and Mr. Ho have been savvy about how to best continue to serve customers amid heightened tensions and changing rules. Their methods for coping could serve as a useful model for restaurateurs in other cities dealing with similar issues.
Suppa, a homonym for give it a blanch in Cantonese, rolled out delivery services for the first time in February, a move welcomed by loyal patrons who wanted to enjoy hot pot away from the crowds.
Those who choose to dine-in are met by an employee with a thermometer who checks their temperature at the door and asks about their travel history.
At another restaurant managed by the pair, a customer was turned away because his body temperature reached 99.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37.6 degrees Celsius, the low range of a fever.
It was awkward, Mr. Kwok said. It could make them feel bad, but it had to be done.
In the days since the hot pot clan fell ill, the local news media, doctors and even local legislators have debated the relative safety of eating hot pot and other family-style meals.
Early on, one doctor speculated that steam from the boiling soup carried by air currents made hot pots a particularly dangerous activity. Others have since refuted that assertion, noting that any shared meal in proximity to others risks exposure.
There isnt sufficient evidence to show that this novel coronavirus can be transmitted through activities such as hot pots and saunas, said Sophia Chan, Hong Kongs secretary for health.
Benjamin Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, said transmission more likely occurred with prolonged close contact in a room with poor ventilation than as a result of any particular method of cooking.
Mr. Kwok, the restaurant owner, faulted something altogether different. He argued that it was not peoples actual diet but their media diet that had caused problems.
He blamed the unfair maligning of hot pots on the rapid spread of panic and misinformation during a crisis.
People may not think its real, he said of news shared online and among friends, but they will share it anyway.
While a vaccine against the novel coronavirus is expected to take upward of a year to develop and test, other treatments for the deadly threat could be just a few months away, health experts say.
More than 410,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and over 18,000 have died. Several countries have gone into lockdown as the number of those infected by the highly contagious disease continues to rapidly rise.
Scientists around the world are racing to develop treatments and vaccines, which will have to undergo several rounds of testing and clinical trials before moving on to mass production.
While a vaccine will likely take between 12 and 18 months to be proven safe and effective and be produced for mass use, other effective treatments could emerge much sooner.
Prof. Peter Jay Hotez, a prominent virologist and the dean of the Baylor College of Medicines National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston, Texas, told The Media Line that the earliest treatment that could work against COVID-19 would be a convalescent serum antibody therapy, in which the antibodies of a person who has recovered from the virus are injected into a sick patient.
In a study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases in 2014, researchers demonstrated how convalescent blood plasma might be effective to significantly reduce mortality rates if administered to those who have contracted severe acute respiratory infections (SARIs) soon after their symptoms first appear.
According to Hotez, the next treatment to emerge after this will most likely be repurposed existing antiviral drugs in a few weeks or months, then new chemical drugs within a year, and a vaccine in one to three years.
Interestingly, Hotez and his team of scientists already developed a coronavirus vaccine years ago, following the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, which spread out of China and ended up killing more than 770 people worldwide. However, when the vaccine reached the stage of human testing in 2016, he was unable to secure further funding and the trials were never concluded.
At the time we manufactured it, people had lost interest in coronavirus epidemics and pandemics, Hotez said, adding that researchers are now working to repurpose that vaccine for COVID-19.
Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases including some cases of the common cold, and not just SARS and COVID-19.
Dr. Rivka Abulafia-Lapid, a senior lecturer on virology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, agrees with Hotez that antiviral treatments will likely become available within six months and much sooner than a vaccine, barring any unforeseen developments.
Israel already has 11 different drugs for trial [on COVID-19 patients] so I would say that the first thing to come out will be a drug that will be commonly agreed upon by the worlds scientists and the FDA [the US Food and Drug Administration], followed by a vaccine, Abulafia-Lapid told The Media Line. In a couple of months, they will come out with a future treatment or maybe a cocktail of drugs.
Abulafia-Lapid, who for 25 years headed a research team in Israel dedicated to developing a viable vaccine against HIV and other autoimmune diseases, said that any vaccine would have to undergo a lengthy testing period involving several phases of clinical trials.
Among the current drugs being looked at as anti-coronavirus candidates in the meantime, she points to California-based biotech company Gilead Sciencess experimental antiviral drug remdesivir originally tested on humans with the Ebola virus as being a front-runner in terms of showing promise. Remdesivir is already being used in several coronavirus-linked clinical trials.
Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, meanwhile, announced last week that it would donate more than 6 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate pills to hospitals across the United States for further research. The medicine, which is typically used to treat malaria, is being investigated as a candidate to counter COVID-19.
Regarding the possibility of a convalescent antibody serum treatment, which Hotez says could already be administered to seriously ill patients, Abulafia-Lapid indicated that while such a treatment could save lives, significant challenges remained with scaling-up this method for thousands of people.
Ultimately, however, she is very optimistic that the world is six months away from an effective treatment.
In the future, we will have to come out every year with a new [COVID-19] vaccine because it mutates like influenza, Abulafia-Lapid said, adding that because the virus is so new, the human immune system is currently defenseless against it. You really need to teach the body [how to defend against it], she said.
Its been grim news all around for COVID-19. Italys skyrocketing death toll has now risen above Chinas. Countries are shutting borders. Massive cities in the US have ordered shelter-in-place to reduce viral transmission, severely disrupting livelihoods, businesses, and personal relationships for the greater good.
So. How about some good news?
According to STAT, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institute of Health (NIH) are betting on synthetic biology to outperform nature in engineering new vaccines against the COVID-19 virus.
Its a movement several years in the works. The idea is simple: we can already train the human immune system to recognize, hunt down, and attack invaders using variations of the viral enemy; chunks of virus, living viruses with kneecapped infection abilities. Scientists already largely understand how to trigger a safe immune response based on the makeup of a virus.
With synthetic biology, why cant we amp up those responses multi-fold?
Thanks to breakneck-speed advances in genome sequencing and synthesis, its now relatively simple to engineer components of a virus that are critical for triggering an immune response. To synthetic biologists, this represents a critical opportunity to revamp a sluggish vaccine-engineering industry based on decades-old technology. Why conform to nature when theres a chance to outwit its designs?
If COVID-19 ever comes back, or another coronavirus epidemic emergesa high chance, epidemiologists saysynthetic biology could offer us a plug-and-play universal vaccine. One thats produced at scale, doesnt need refrigeration, and can be easily tailored to a new outbreak and shipped to the entire world.
Vaccines are so critical to our everyday lives that its easy to overlook how theyre made. There are several ways, but the general concept is the same: identify the enemy, engineer one that causes less symptoms, and manufacture it at scale.
The enemy can be the entire virus, or protein components of the virus that stick out. For the whole virus, scientists can engineer one thats alive but less virulent, or use a dead one. More recently, theyve been focusing on figuring out the protein grabbers on the virus that interact with the immune systemtheyre basically how our bodies identify foes and rage into attack mode.
Picture a pincushion as a virus: the needles sticking out of it are the proteinscalled antigensthat interact with our immune system, rather than the cushion itself. Vaccines are generally similar in structure or functionality to these needle antigens. Think of them as beacons to attract our immune cells.
Regardless of the exact approach, the crux is training the immune system to recognize something nefarious that its never seen before, without subjecting it to the viruss full force. Knowing what the immune system grabs ontoidentifying the beaconson a virus gives us an incredibly potent target.
What if we stick these needle antigen targets interchangeably onto a synthetic pincushion?
Thats the general idea leading the development of synthetic biology vaccines. Forget nature; weve distilled critical parts of a virus, and can make Lego bits out of them in a plug-and-play manner. A specific definition of what constitutes a synthetic biology vaccine is still in flux, but one categorization is two-fold: vaccines using engineered genetic components, or man-made particles that mimic actual viruses.
The first option is already in clinical trials. Rather than making antigen protein components, scientists can instead synthesize mRNA, the messenger that delivers the genetic code to a cells protein factory. Thats what Moderna is trying with their COVID-19 vaccine. In theory, the mRNA will cause our own cells to follow its instructions and produce viral antigens. This alarms the immune system and triggers it to generate soldiersgenerally, proteins called antibodies that grab onto the beacons.
Unfortunately, early safety tests have found that mRNA vaccines can trigger detrimental reactions, and its not clear how effective theyll be. So far, these vaccines have yet to gain FDA approval. With Modernas COVID-19 vaccine in Phase I trials in humans, however, we may get safety (though not yet efficacy) results as early as the next few months.
The other idea is far more ambitious. The idea is to make a faux-virus that selectively amplifies the antigen component. Its a two-step job. First, scientists need to make a self-assembling core that mimics the body of the virusthe part that doesnt usually touch the immune system. Dr. Neil King, who has been working on coronavirus vaccines at the University of Washington, is using nanoparticles to build that core with the help of computational design.
Not every nanoparticle makes the cut. The key is to design one that works well with the antigen proteins, which need to be dotted on the cores surface. The more the antigens stick out, the easier it is for the immune system to recognize those invaders.
Heres where synthetic biology comes in. Using sophisticated computer algorithms, scientists can simulate how different sizes of nanoparticles interact with the antigen componentand in turn, how well they stimulate the immune system. We might try one million variants on the computer before finding a protein sequence that forms an optimal, self-assembling nanoparticle, said King.
Once the design is cleared, the protein sequence for the nanoparticle is encoded into synthetic DNA instructions. E. Coli bacteria, the workhorses of the lab, then adopt these instructions, process them inside their own cells, and pump out nanoparticle proteins at scale. When purifiedand if the computer simulations panned outthe proteins will then self-assemble into ideal nanoparticles in test tubes.
The second step is figuring out where to put the needles on the pincushion nanoparticle. Scientists have long known that certain factors can increase the chance that the immune system will recognize the viral antigenfor example, where the needles are placed pr how many there are and in what arrangement. The body has many biochemical responses that rip up synthetic antigens long before the immune system ever gets a looklike us washing our hands frequently or using hand sanitizers to neutralize a virus. For a vaccine, we need the antigens to stick around long enough to train the immune system.
King, for example, found that an ordered, repetitive array of the COVID-19 viral antigens produces a stronger immune response than a single needle protein antigen in the pincushion. In other words? Vaccines based on biosynthetic, virus-like nanoparticles could be more efficient than RNA or other vaccines in the pipeline for COVID-19. According to STAT News, several groups have begun testing these lab-made nanoparticles in mice to study how the animals react to COVID-19-like components.
Synthetic biology for viruses may seem far-fetched. It might not be a near-term solution for immediately squashing COVID-19. But its not a pipe dream. This month, King presented a model of designer vaccines to the US president while the latter toured facilities at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
If the solution works, well be looking at an entirely novel class of vaccines that breaks from natures reality. Nanoparticle-based vaccines, for example, dont need additional chemicalsdubbed adjuvantsto help stimulate the immune system. Because adjuvants are an additional component that in a minority of cases can lead to immune overreaction, not having them could make manufacturing processes easier and reduce adverse effects.
In addition, synthetic biology could also coronate a vaccine with a critical property: heat-resilience. A major problem with global production and shipping of vaccines is that they generally need to be refrigerated. However, synthetic nanoparticle protein scaffolds could make them far more stable than traditional vaccines. This means that for whoever needs help in a pandemic, at whatever altitude and climate, help could be more easily on the way.
Finally, theres hope for plug-and-play. If another novel virus comes along, scientists could potentially replace the COVID-19 viruss antigensthe needles that stick outwith ones from the new virus. The pincushion remains optimal and the same. In theory, it could dramatically arm us with a blueprint to better handle the next outbreak.
Designer vaccines are, without doubt, still very new and very ambitious. But perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic is giving them exactly the kick they need. Vaccine development has languished for nearly a century relying on traditional methods. Now that were facing our viral enemies far more viscerally and on a global scale, why not push for that next quantum leap in vaccine design?
Image Credit: MasterTux from Pixabay
